With less than a week to go before I make my debut in the Farmfoods British Par 3 Championship, life has comprised a combination of work, golf practice, more work and a second visit to Keith, the osteopath.
You may recall I wrote about a knee injury a few weeks ago which prompted my initial visit to Keith’s practice. He’s an entertaining, fifty-something guy who used to work for a Championship football club and now fills his weekends playing guitar in a bluegrass band.
He was telling me this as he pummelled my body having attributed the problem in my left knee to the fact that my left leg is slightly shorter than the right. Apparently it’s not unusual, but it gave Keith carte blanche to crack on (literally) with rectifying matters.
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I have never been on the receiving end of so much physical punishment without being permitted to hit the other guy back. However, the osteopath’s physical assaults have worked, which has enabled me to make it back onto the practice ground following a frustrating break and a couple of fresh lessons administered by the club professional.
We’ve focused on the short game this week and specifically on rhythm.
Golf is a game in which rhythm plays an integral role. Club golfers will tell you that, should you make a decent start to a round, you just want to keep playing. Get held up, however, and it’s invariably curtains; your concentration is affected and your rhythm evaporates.
Nick, the golf pro, tells me that while concentration remains vital to playing good golf, rhythm is pivotal to short-game success.
He describes the short-game swing as a compromise between the power of a drive and the accuracy of putting, peppering his instructions with words such as finesse and effortless.
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The idea, he explains, is to hit the ball as accurately as possible while retaining sufficient power to reach the green in a single shot. “You want the accuracy of the shot’s trajectory, behaviour and landing zone to be maximised with a rhythmic swing, not a hit,” he says.
Nick’s short-game vocabulary made me wonder whether he had been speaking with Keith, though one statistic stood out: around 65 per cent of all golf shots occur within 100 yards of the green. “Master the short game,” says Nick, “and you’re always in with a shout of winning...”
* Peter Sharkey is playing in the Farmfoods British Par 3 Championship, staged at Nailcote Hall between 6-9 August.